Sunday, December 13, 2009

This is a screencast that I created for my web design students. This was an introduction I made to help my students with their web site consultant projects, and I think I had quite a few views.

This was actually one of a series of screencasts that I created, the final one of which I need to re-record as I forgot to turn my wireless mic on, so it is just a random series of clicks and me typing in code for a web site.

I know this method of teaching will benefit me in the immediate future as I attempt to teach teachers how to use their tablet PC's. I will post more links soon.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Hello, there. I am experimenting with Etherpad for my English class, so I thought I would throw an entry up here.

My students are studying for The Odyssey right now, and as part of that, they are creating a glossary of terms on my class' Moodle page. Each bell has a separate glossary, so that everyone will be creating entries for a couple of the heroes, monsters, or gods that we encountered in the reading.

The reason I am using Etherpad is as a sign-up for which glossary entries they will be making. See that document for my first bell class here: http://etherpad.com/QHjU9ZHM7D.

I will post a follow-up after we have had a chance to fully explore this activity to let you know how it went, but I am hoping for good things!

***Update***

Today's activity went extremely well. Aside from some side conversations going on in the chat window, the classes were extremely focused. They really seemed to get into creating something for the whole class, and they really invested themselves in their work. It was good to see them all on-task with computers in front of them, as sometimes they like to play on sites that are not part of the assignment.

In all, I would call my first foray into a whole class using Etherpad a success. It worked well for what it was, a sign-up sheet. I can't imagine I have much use for Scriblink, the other site that we were exploring, but I could be convinced...